After wasting a week on Dinkle and book signings, Week 2 of The Burnings begins with a huge exposition dump.
Before we get to it, a question: if Tom Batiuk hadn’t put out this puff piece in the Cleveland newspaper, would you even know last week was the beginning of The Burnings? Last week saw three authors, two of whom are nationally relevant, standing around smirking at each other during an unrelated book signing. Which is a very common story in the Funkyverse. The Act III links above show that Les alone did book signings in 2010, 2011, 2017, 2019, 2021, and now 2024. Most of them were multi-week arcs. Today’s strip feels like the beginning of the actual Burnings story.
It begins, as many Funkyverse stories do, with the word “So.” Some readers have complained about Batiuk’s frequent use of this tic. I think it’s fine, because it’s a natural and efficient way of entering the conversation. As you know, the phrase “as you know” is forced and clunky. “So” is a rare bit of good writing technique in the Funkyverse. Enjoy it; there won’t be many more.
Principal Nate Green – a Funky Winkerbean character whose role in Crankshaft I didn’t foresee at the beginning of the year – says “You know, Fahrenheit 451 is on the school board’s ‘not approved’ reading list, so it can’t be ordered by the school.” Let’s talk about that.
The Supreme Court ruled in the case Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982) that “local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.'” The subquote was a reference to West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, which had to do with the Pledge of Allegiance and is often cited in freedom of speech and religion cases.
Now, “removed from library shelves” and “can’t be ordered by the school because it’s on the ‘not approved’ reading list” are not the same thing. And the ruling was intentionally narrow in scope. But this was the most applicable Supreme Court ruling I could find. (If there’s a better one, please let me know in the comments.) If the matter in The Burnings became a court case – which it won’t, barring another lost Lisa VHS tape or a Timemop appearance – it would probably be cited in arguments.
So the entire premise of The Burnings is dubious. Any school district that puts out a vague “not approved book list” is skating on thin ice. Modern efforts to control the content of books used in education have moved on to other tactics.
Les sees the list as an empty threat, and announces his intention to teach it anyway. Nate says “Do you realize ‘not approved’ means ‘not approved to teach’?” Nate, do you realize that “principal” means “you’re Les’ boss, and you can fire him for insubordination?”
I didn’t mean this to be a TBTropes entry, but this is a perfect example of one:
No Oversight Whatsoever: No one in the Funkyverse may exercise any control or influence over any “good” character’s choices, even when that person is canonically that character’s superior.
Tom Batiuk’s personal hatred of editors seems to extend to any person who would normally have the ability to oversee their subordinates. Nobody tells Les what to do, ever. And there are many other examples. Church leadership wouldn’t approve of Dinkle’s behavior, much of which is downright illegal. Or writing a book with a title that suggests that church is for his personal, non-religious use only. Chester Hagglemore doesn’t tell Atomik Komix what to do, even though it exists solely to make the comic books he likes. Mordor Financial did nothing when Skip waltzed into their New York office and declared himself the owner of their newspaper.
Getting back to The Burnings: Les is probably right that the ‘not approved book list’ is an empty threat. But sometimes empty threats are enough. If Principal Nate doesn’t want this material taught because it’ll get him in hot water with the school board, he can order Les not to teach it for that reason, under threat of dismissal. One of the first things I learned in the working world was “don’t get your boss in trouble with their boss.”
And he can do it, too. The Supreme Court has found that partial restrictions on content – such as restricting minors from accessing age-inappropriate material – are constitutional. That was FCC v Pacifica, more famously known as the “Seven Dirty Words” case. This enables things like the movie ratings system.
Which is a fatal blow to this story. Fahrenheit 451 does contain vulgar language and some R-rated content. So there is an argument for not teaching it to minor schoolchildren. I’m not saying school boards should disallow the book; I’m saying they can, and they have enough legal ground to stand on. This is also why seemingly inoffensive books like The Diary of Anne Frank find themselves in the crosshairs. (It has a surprising amount of sexual content, though it was missing from the version I read in school in the 1980s.)
Note that in all these words nobody says why Fahrenheit 451 is restricted in Westview schools, or gives any reason why the restriction should be defied. Maybe they will later, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ll be surprised if it’s anything beyond “Les wants to teach it.” And Les always gets what he wants.
On the other hand, isn’t it fantastic to learn that The Burnings were caused by nothing more than Les Moore’s pigheaded arrogance? The same Burnings that relegated his own precious Dead Lisa books to a post-apocalyptic bookstore. And did the same to his daughter’s Dead Lisa book that taught us all to “recognize humanity as our nation.” Imagine if a book that important had been permanently lost to humanity!
Congratulations, Les. You’re officially the Jar Jar Binks of the Funkyverse.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Eight of The Byrnings: csroberto2854.exe has encountered a major error and needs to be rebooted
Banana Jr. 6000,
I trust you feel the honor of posting on a relevant Crankshaft story. It sure doesn’t happen often.
1. Someone posted yesterday that CS has increased readership this year. It added newspapers. My best guess why: Funky Winkerbean followers demanded it. I think this will preclude Batiuk from retiring, but his age might more determine that.
2. “I didn’t mean this to be a TBTropes entry, but this is a perfect example of one.”
I read it this way, “As you may know, I didn’t mean this to be a TBTropes entry, but this is a perfect example of one.”
3. I do think if Tom wanted a story on censorship, he missed the one staring him in the face. Instead of bookburnings creating a national disaster and forcing a dystopian future, why not use the one you mentioned, BJ? Mordor Financial could have come to Westview and padlocked the newspaper building. Or removed all the machinery and research files. Ignoring the fact that Skip is trespassing and has no legal use of the facilities, TB could have made quite a story about free speech and freedom of the press. Still leaving SOSF plenty of snark ammunition.
Yes, it does feel good to post about what’s basically a Funky Winkerbean story, about a topic that’s dear to my heart. Mass Media Law was one of my favorite college classes, and I’ve always kept an eye on things.
Re #1: I don’t think that says much without knowing what those papers were. It’s evidence that CS isn’t losing papers in net, but if it’s losing big ones and adding small ones, that could still be a net loss. More importantly, there’s no evidence papers are dropping it in bulk. As bad as the Funkyverse is, it’s not much worse – and in some cases, less offensive – than the rest of the comics page. I’m more surprised that newspapers aren’t dropping the comics page en masse.
Re #3: Yes, it’s amazing that in a world full of published books and their authors, Batiuk didn’t use one of them as the target. Les having to defend Lisa’s Story from the Twilight-style hatedom it would have by now would have been a great story in the hands of someone competent. But Batiuk always takes the easy, vague, straw villain way out.
I don’t know how many papers once carried FW, but possibly every one with a comics page decided to divest themselves of Dilbert not long after.
I was unable to verify that but I assume it is due to papers picking up Crankshaft after FW ended.
TB was lucky enough to be in the ‘Gannett 34’. Crankshaft is in Group 4.
https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2023/09/24/the-gannett-34/
Gannett is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher, owns USA Today, and local papers in almost every state. The Gannet 34 titles seem to be a mixture of Andrews McMeel (GoComics) and Kings Features (The Comics Kingdom).
The bottom line is Gannett is taking the decision away from local newspaper editors. Any newspaper under the Gannett umbrella has to choose from these groups if they want to feature a comics page. This decision went into effect in late October 2023.
I’ve not been able to determine how Gannett came up with this list. Did the syndicates decide and offer a list to Gannett? Was there bargaining and the decisions made based on price?
Was it a reader survey catering to their existing, fading audience, as you suggest?
Roger the Codger: Oh, yeah. Funky Winkerbean… I mean Crankshaft is great! I’ve been reading it for sixty years.
Any cartoonist in this list got a good financial bump by getting featured in more newspapers. Anybody not in these lists was hurt by the decision. These lists are missing some really great strips.
Was it dumb luck that Crankshaft was included? I can’t believe how lucky Batiuk has been professionally. Batiuk is still whining about not getting into the offices of DC or Marvel, but that was probably the best thing that ever happened to him. Somehow he was able to put out three comic strips at the same time? Batiuk fails upward. Nobody can deny, professionally, Batiuk has been incredibly lucky. Sometimes I think there has to be magic, witchcraft, or a deal with the Devil involved.
Contemporary cartoonists are struggling, most working two jobs. Meanwhile, Batiuk continues to churn out pap while enjoying his 3,000 sq ft Comics Castle on several acres in the countryside of Medina County.
Harry Bemis (Burgess Meredith): That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all.
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
That is a good article, and very good insight on your part. Definitely a good read.
When I wake up after midnight, I check GoComics for CS, Alley Oop, Pooch Cafè, and Pearls Before Swine.
Then I switch over to Comics Kingdom to check on Judge Parker, Mary Worth, Rex Morgan MD, and finally Sally Forth. (I am such a boring creature of habit.)
I wondered if that was the explanation. Our local was taken over by Gannet a year or two ago and Cranky was added to the comics—don’t get me started on how they decimated our local newspaper. Our best source of local area news is the university student newspaper
Thanks! I got the Harry Bemis reference too!
Anonymous Sparrow,
1. In our discussion yesterday regarding the Atom and Marvel’s counter character, the Ant-man, I left off an important detail. Check out Fantastic Four #16 marked July 1963. Caught in a micro-dimensional universe by Doctor Doom, the FF need the help of the Ant-Man. Marvel apparently realized they needed shrinkage 🤪 below insect size. It has a nice cover by the way.
2. Maybe Tom Batiuk will also realize small insignificant accurate details can improve a story.
s’il n’y avait pas de connaissances inconnues, je ne pourrais jamais apprendre.
Panel two Les is one of more punch-able Les faces in quite some time. It’s like he doesn’t realize his boss could, in all likelihood, beat the living hell out of him right there and then. And no court in the land would convict him, either.
And no court would find Westview High School liable for wrongful termination if Nate simply fired Les. Lord knows he’s given them enough other reasons to get rid of him.
Les would never have survived the layoffs. “We have to lay off 10% of our staff? Who’s that asshole English teacher that’s never here because he’s running around Hollywood and obsessing over his dead wife? Yeah, he’s gone. One down, several to go.”
His boss explains something to him, and he replies in the most obnoxious, smug manner possible. “Oh, next time write more clearly, I’ll teach what I feel like teaching”. And Nate just stands there taking it? Come on.
So many Funkyverse stories rely on people just standing there and taking the main characters’ insolence. The “financial planning seminar” week comes to mind. Funky should have been thrown out of that meeting by Wednesday.
It’s like Tom’s weird take on bullies. He hates them forever! Bull supplicated himself to Les repeatedly, begging for forgiveness, and Les was slagging Bull *in the cemetery as the funeral was ending*. Over something from 60 years ago.
BUT–Les is a bully. Dinkle’s a bigger one. Crank and his drivers bully Lena, simply because she exists. But they’re the ones we’re supposed to cheer for.
Tom’s last interesting character was Defiant Goth Chien. She was replaced with Compliant Goth…what was her name? Invertebratia, as she had no spine? He did an arc that was just kids getting tormented, and she recommended doing nothing. Gee whillikers, too bad there wasn’t a once-bullied teacher to stop them!
Tom loves bullies. As long as they’re him, and the victims aren’t.
Nate served in Vietnam, and Les has little to no fighting skills (even when he tried learning karate)
Les would be left with all of his bones broken
Hey now, don’t sell Les short. He also has no teaching skills, no writing skills, and no interpersonal skills.
Nate is long long LONG overdue to go Sam Kinison in Back To School on Les. Especially after the way Les treated him during the photocopier incident of 2018.
https://sonofstuckfunky.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/180118.gif
Les made too many photocopies and decided to make that Nate’s problem. The man is unhinged.
You reminded me of Marvel’s Dagger’s stepfather, Phil Carlisle, who called himself “a battle-hardened veteran of the Korean conflict.”
In actuality, he was an Army cook.
Phil looks a bit like Les Moore, come to think of it.
Marvel’s Dagger’s stepfather Phil Carlisle called himself “a battle-hardened veteran of the Korean conflict.” In actuality, he was an Army cook.
This is also Basil Fawlty’s backstory. Who also looks a little bit like Les, except he’s too tall and is actually funny.
Les would just pull our his all-occasion excuse.
Nate: You can’t teach Fahrenheit 451 in class.
Les: You know, my wife died. Of cancer. Twenty some years ago.
Nate: You’re right. Do whatever you want, Les. You’ve earned it. Lisa would be proud.
Les is a man who doesn’t realize that he can and should be replaced. In the real world, he’d be given the ‘God have mercy on your soul’ speech from the movie Billy Madison. Here, he’s been issued plot armor by fellow spoiled child Batiuk.
Very good points about today; I knew this Monday strip would be so meaty in annoyance to be worth a fresh post! How much did Les think about the repercussions of all this; sure he could flip off the school board and his principal is too much of a whimp not to fire him and nip the problem in the bud, but he’s going to have to be dealing with ten times the amount of parent meetings the “cancer play” fiasco got, on top of whatever else ‘think of the children’-type busybodys might do in the day and age of doxxing. Granted, we sure can make this ongoing event Les’s fault for stirring up the hive, but I’m sure he wouldn’t see it that way. “You can’t blame me for the masses that have gone so mad as to burn classic literature!” He would say in a huff. “I guess some children were left behind!”
It may be fairly early to tell, but I could almost see Les being made a paragon of this arc along with Lillian. Maybe he’ll feel “some” level of guilt from directing everyone’s attention onto the old lady to begin with (I’ll have to guess that on Wednesday the Westview store he orders from angrily shuts down the order once the controversy starts), or maybe he just has to be driven in the name of Lisa to defend good literature, depending on how (literally) hot everything gets. He’s at least already more important than I expected so far, either way, so one can’t help but think we’re stuck with him for the long run.
To think that my “SuperLes Saves the Day” prediction could be far spotter on than I realized….
Les Moore is genuinely one of the best depictions of a sociopath you’ll ever see in fiction. He is completely unrestrained by shame, morals, or caring about anyone other than himself. People – even his family and all his friends – are of no use to Les, beyond what they can to advance his agenda. He’s also a master manipulator. But Batiuk insists on making him the Designated Hero.
I can’t help but find a certain irony to the TVTropes write-up on the Designated Hero:
Sound like any Best Actress Academy Award Winners we might know…?
Related to the Batiukverse: The Fifth and Final Week of The 2001 Storyline of Jim Kablichnick Going Insane Over A Speck of Paint On His Telescope
Policeman: HANDS UP IN THE AIR, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR HUNTING WITHOUT A PERMIT, YOU INSANE MOTHERFUCKER!
Jim: I’M NOT COMING OUT! I KNOW YOU’RE ALL ALIENS DISGUISING AS HUMANS!
Pete: Is it about that standoff with Mr. Kablichnick and him ending up killing one officer?
Darin: HOW DID YOU KNOW!?
Pete: You’re laughing. Mr. Kablichnick is possibly in federal prison and YOU’RE LAUGHING. THIS IS FUCKING SERIOUS.
Mooch: But what about Mr. Collins?
Fred: For the last time, Eric, You didn’t cause his death.
Jim: Wait a second, so you’re telling me THAT ALL THIS TIME, I’VE BEEN STARING AT A SPECK OF GLOW-IN-THE-DARK PAINT AND NOT A ALIEN SPACECRAFT!?
Mooch: Yes.
(Jim starts throwing everything at Mooch, Pete and Darin, who hurry out of the room)
Jim: (incoherent screaming)
Jim got off easy, he didn’t get fired at all (because there are strips that feature him teaching at WHS)
And yet this man goes on to spend most of his limited Act 3 appearances ranting about how dumb his current students are. Remarkable.
They blamed the kids for this??!! Oh, come on!
It’s not their fault Kabozo failed to identify an obvious prank, do the most basic science, or even tell anyone else about his “alien spaceships.” It’s not their fault he went completely off his nut and starting firing live ammunition. He could have killed someone! (Stray bullets fired into the air can do that.)
But don’t worry, everything’s ok. The police dropped all charges for a crime he’s clearly guilty of, the school didn’t fire or even punish him, and the schoolkids took all the blame. Now I see why Westview High is called the Scapegoats!
Also, how is Darin just now learning this from the morning newspaper, when it’s night time?
Good Lord, this story sucks.
Les is hell-bent on being a martyr for the Burnings, isn’t he? Provided he’s a martyr in the literal sense, I’m good with that.
Too many martyrs and too many dead
Too many lies, too many empty words were said
Too many times for too many angry men
Oh, let it never be again
Oh, let it never be again…
— Phil Ochs, “Too Many Martyrs”
Ochs’s first album was All the News That’s Fit to Sing. I can’t imagine anyone singing Les Moore, not even the Ray Bradbury who took a cue from Walt Whitman and sang the body electric.
My favorite martyr
(not a TV series with Ray Walston and Bill Bixby)
is Michael Servetus, whom the Catholics burned in effigy and the Calvinists burned in the flesh.
Does Fahrenheit 451 really have R-rated content? I haven’t read it in decades, but I don’t remember that.
Nor have I, but I guess it would depend on the “hyper” level of hypersensitivity, and that level has been increasing in recent decades.
The original film version of “The Andromeda Strain” has a still image of one of the victims, a beautiful young woman who is completely topless. That film earned a “G” back in the early seventies, re-released today it would probably be an “R.”
It’s a stated reason for the book being disallowed in some places. Calling it “R-rated” may have been a little artful on my part.
I knew you didn’t mean the “R-rated content” literally, but as far as I can remember the swear words in Fahrenheit 451 were on the “damn” and “hell” level, not the “seven words you can’t say on television” level.
***
In regard to today’s strip, I imagine Cayla as a child talking her mom, “You saw the movie Saturday Night Fever. Can I see it next week?”
Mom: “No, Cayla. It’s rated R.”
Cayla: “Why is it rated R?”
Mom: “Because the ratings board thinks it’s not appropriate for children.”
Cayla: “That’s not what I meant!!!“
as far as I can remember the swear words in Fahrenheit 451 were on the “damn” and “hell” level
That’s my recollection too. I read the book in high school and don’t recall it being vulgar. And I, being a fervent worshipper of George Carlin even at age 16, would have noticed.
According to Grandpa Google, “foul language” is the most common reason for Fahrenheit 451 being challenged. Which is probably more research than Tom Batiuk did on this story.
F451 is the center of this story because it’s the kind of cheap irony Batiuk adores. “They’re burning a book about book burning!” And…. that’s it. Nothing will be ever done with this idea. It’s no Catch-22, where the central idea “you can only get out of combat duty if you’re crazy, and anybody who wants to get out of combat duty is sane” is the root of many stories, and the theme of the whole book. Batiuk thinks he’s a genius for coming up with the premise, then starts checking his mail for Pulitzers.
Gabby says—Actually the MPAA movie ratings were a decade earlier than Pacifica, and their predecessor The Hayes Office go back to the early 30s. Both were efforts by the movie industry to head off potentially more stringent government regulations. In Pacifica, the broadcaster wasn’t really trying to test anything, it just got caught in an effort by certain groups to control content.
What is publicly acceptable changes over time. While “F*** isn’t said in over-the air programs, words like bastard, whore, son-of-a-bitch are not uncommon. On non-broadcast services like AMC and FX, just about anything is acceptable.
one additional caveat—there sometimes agreements between producers and networks—You can us the F-word twice in this episode, but not by our lead character
“Enabled” wasn’t a good word choice. Pacifica confirmed that restricting age-inappropriate content in general was Constitutional, though as you point out such efforts had long existed. from children The “parental advisory explicit content” labels of the 90s would have been a better example.
Gabby says–What’s been happening in recent years is the “advisories” at the beginning of programs–“this program may not be appropriate for all audiences,” or “contains scenes of extreme violence.” Or, my favorite, “This program includes smoking.”
All efforts to head off potentially more draconian government regulation or lawsuits from “citizens” (i.e., members of special interest groups)
Yes, “policing yourself so someone else doesn’t police you” is a factor. Especially television and radio, because the FCC’s ability to grant and revoke broadcast licenses is a strong incentive to keep them happy.
And yes, it’s amazing what’s deemed too sensitive for young ears to hear, at the same time they’re expected to deal with horrible things like mass shootings.
This has probably already been brought up, but isn’t Les 70 by now? Why in hell isn’t he retired? For that matter, why isn’t Nate? Must be the result of some of Timemop’s meddling.
Good question. Les, Funky, Cindy, Bull, and other characters like Crazy Harry were all in high school together, and implied to be in the same graduating class. That makes them all within a year or two of each other age-wise. No matter what effect the time skips have, these characters should always be the same age relative to each other. But this often isn’t the case. Characters seem to age at different rates.
Like that joke where Funky supposedly won his age group in the Dead Lisa Walk, while other characters who must be the same age as him reacted in astonishment. (I still don’t know what that joke was supposed to be.)
Or when Linda talked about retiring to take of Bull, even though she’s the same age as Les and the whole CTE arc was supposedly about Linda’s financial problems.
Or Cindy still being a hot Hollywood wife, married to a much younger actor.
As a practical matter Linda should probably be older than the Act I gang by at least a few years given that she had a teenage daughter by the time she got together with Bull and TB was still treating his original gang as just-starting-out twentysomethings at the time. Not that this ever seemed to occur to the author…
Or when Linda talked about retiring to take of Bull, even though she’s the same age as Les and the whole CTE arc was supposedly about Linda’s financial problems.
In the “Meet the Cast” images, Linda’s age at the start of Act III is 52 and Les is 46
I’ll be dipped, he DID remember it once!
Or Cindy being, you know, PREGNANT.
Wasn’t that announced in June of LAST year? Must be one difficult pregnancy.
It’s like The Room, when Lisa’s mother yells “I have BREAST CANCER!” And no one reacts, and it just drops from the plot.
Hmm…Lisa, breast cancer, no follow up…and the creator of both The Room and FW is named–TOM?
We only first heard of Cindy being pregnant in May of this year, 2024.
https://www.gocomics.com/crankshaft/2024/05/18
I fully admit to not super caring about this strip’s timeline, but since when has Tom started? How old is Ed? Born before the Depression, or before the Pre-Cambrian Era?
Wait, May 2024–doesn’t that mean that Cindy could give birth in DECEMBER 2024? When the strip ends? And likely give birth at Monotony’s Pizza again.
There’s only one thing wrong with the Mayonnaise Jarre baby–IT’S ALIVE!
@billythesplut Ed supposedly pitched in a Spring Training game for the Toledo Mud Hens in 1940. Based on the age of the youngest member of the real-life team, Ed was born no later than 1919, making him at least 103 years old now. Which is also consistent with his role in baseball’s early integration.
Crankshaft has later contradicted this, saying things like how he watched Vic Power and Rocky Colavito (born in 1927 and 1933) growing up. But, you know, Timemop.
And today we get the Les-Cayla strip that was promised in the Cleveland.com puff piece… complete with Cayla’s terrifying eyes in panel 1, Bernice Silver in panel 2, and a VERY punchable Les in panel 3.
I’m guessing this strip is probably one of the ones, if not THE one, that TB is most proud of in this arc. Can’t wait to see how she reverses course, though, when she finds that Les did eventually acquire Roland’s Playboys.
Day 2 of a month-long arc, and he’s already shot his load.
With an election around the corner, I’m getting ready for typical TB cowardice. If this post wades too much into politics, let me know and apologies. One of TB’s problems is he wants to take on issues that 99 percent of us agree with him on. Cancer is bad! Concussions are bad! Every now and then though, he wants to wade into more controversial topics, but then slinks away from doing so. Same sex couples should be at proms–but best keep them in the closet. We are facing environmental challenges–but let’s call it “climate damage” instead of “climate change.” Tom wants to be cheered by the left but not booed by the right. Something tells me, the same thing will happen with the Burnings. Hope I’m wrong.
“One type of song that has come into increasing prominence in recent months is the folk song of protest. You have to admire people who sing these songs. It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on.” -Tom Lehrer
The soundtrack to reading Tom is more like “The Masochism Tango.”
You make me want to sing rickety-tickety-tin…
(Did you know that Fredric Brown references Tom Lehrer’s “Irish Ballad,” in his mystery novel The Lenient Beast? Well, he does!)
(Brown also alludes to Lewis Carroll’s bread-and-butterfly from Through the Looking Glass twice, first in Night of the Jabberwock and again in The Deep End.)
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky forever when it comes to who deserves the credit and who deserves the blame!
I came across Brown in the 60s when I was in high school. Whoa. Martians Go Home was hilarious
Brown claimed that he wrote the mysteries for money and the science-fiction for fun.
Most people know that his “Arena” became a “Star Trek” episode, but more should know that “X Minus One” adapted his short story “Knock” for radio.
The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door …
I doubt it will even have that much of a point. This is turning into yet another exhibition of Why Les Moore Is Greatest Person Who Ever Lived.
“It seems to me,” says CauCayla, “that if students are old enough to have active shooter drills… they’re old enough to read whatever they want.”
Where does one even start with this horsecrap?
“You want a numbered list?” WordPress said. “I’ll take over for you. You can trust me,” WordPress said. “I won’t make you look like an idiot. Honest!”
If you take a close look at that interview Tom did for this arc, he claims that he owes a lot of his reading experience to the elementary school “bookmobile”, and that he devoured “Heinlein, Bradbury and Asimov” off of said bookmobile, and even supposedly read Fahrenheit 451 in his childhood.
I dunno if that’s coloring this arc since he is making the book the subject of high school at least, but it does suggest some bias on what sort of range of books kids “should” be considered as open to reading.
This whole story feels very 1980s. It completely ignores changes in teen media preferences, as you said. It doesn’t acknowledge more modern approaches that busybodies use to control content in schools. And it ignores case law that specifically forbids this kind of “not approved”-ness being imposed on schools.
Never has the vast gulf between “reading” and actually understanding been so obvious.
How could anyone read Heinlein, Bradbury, and Asimov and not come away with the slightest idea of how to structure a story or create a convincing protagonist?
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Nine of the Byrnings
Cayla, I grew up watching Forrestfire101’s stop-motion Lego Batman videos and GrayStillPlays, and yet I still dont know that the fuck you’re saying
Related to the Batiukverse: The Prelude to the Chien Gets Suspended Storyline of 2000
This week starts with a close up on Chien’s right eye
Chien: What friends? The only other friends I have are Allison, Darin and Pete.
Narrator: Oh, I forgot.
Chien: I think he’s been bullied because he was a creep to women and his scrawny appearance at the time, I’m constantly bullied by something they cannot control.
Narrator: Les is also smug, smirks a lot and a total jerk to his students.
I made a typo in this paragraph (Chien: I think he’s been bullied because he was a creep to women and his scrawny appearance at the time, I’m constantly bullied by something they cannot control.)
Chien: I think he’s been bullied because he was a creep to women and his scrawny appearance at the time, I’m constantly bullied because of something they cannot control.
Good lord how do you find these dreadful arcs? Now I remember why I stopped reading FW for a long time.
I found them using the now defunct https://v7.comicskingdom.net/ part of CK, which doesn’t make you pay premium for the strips
(I dont know what I just said)
I see Puff Batty doesn’t confine himself to rewriting Cole Porter. He’s also “improved” on Mark Twain, whose actual quote was:
I’m sure ol’ Mark would have appreciated the edit by a clearly superior intellect.
Assuming he didn’t simply echo Huckleberry Finn and say that “human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”
Mark Twain gave “new deal” to Franklin Roosevelt (Hank Morgan, the Boss, says that 994 dupes in King Arthur’s Court “needed a new deal”) and while President Truman had “The Buck Stops Here” on his desk, Senator Truman had this quotation from Mark Twain in his office:
“Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
But Les Moore did give the English language such ringing phrases as “LISA!,” “I guess some children were left behind” and “you must have Nordic blood.”
He did not originate “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?,” but I’m sure that Henry Morton Stanley would be proud that he quoted him while climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Incidentally, why is it “Booksmeller”? That conjures up the doctor’s examination of Pu Yi’s bowel movements in “The Last Emperor.” Is it because when paper burns at Fahrenheit 451 it gives off an odor?
“No bean curd…”
Some intellects there at Westview High, huh? Using French for their insults. No “Rover” or “Woof” for them, no sir. Interesting that apparently everyone in the school, including Chien herself, knows what the word means.
When you have teachers as brilliant as Jim Kaputnik, it’s no wonder all the students are at least bilingual.
(Speaking of Kaputnik, isn’t it intriguing that he evolved from “excitable crank” to “truth-telling prophet of Climate Damage doom”?
I know BJr6K has a trope name for this tendency to make characters be whatever they need to be for a given strip or arc, regardless of established traits.)
Some intellects there at Westview High, huh? Using French for their insults. No “Rover” or “Woof” for them, no sir. Interesting that apparently everyone in the school, including Chien herself, knows what the word means.
I think Chien is aware that her nickname is French for male dogs, but doesn’t care
Insults? Her friends called her that.
Definitely another one of Batiuk’s “quirks”. Things no one cares about or needs explained, he’ll explain to death (see also: Jessica Darling Whose Father John Darling Was Murdered, Batton Thomas Creator Of The Comic Strip Three O’Clock High). But he’ll just drop “chien” in there like we’re expected to know what the word means. (Personally, I had to look it up; I took Spanish in high school, not French, so I had no idea.)
(And given that this was from a time when most people would likely have been reading the comic in the printed newspaper still… I wonder how many readers looked at that strip trying to parse just what the f*** that was supposed to mean. And then just gave up and assumed the writer was an idiot.)
Let’s face it, given how much creativity is usually involved in a mocking high school nickname… they didn’t come up with “Dog Parks”? I mean, her name is literally “Parks”, yet they went with “Chien”? Really?
Oh, god, “I know I’m not like them” again. And more pointless, unearned praise of Les.
This may be the first instance of “I know I’m not like them”, as it came well before the Crankshaft baseball story.
But, you know… That’s Our Tom!™
“Do you know Satan?” is pretty underrated as high school insults go… and look at the kids deploying it. You know you’re an outcast when Howdy Doody and Gretchen Grundler are willing to come at you.
Ah yes, I’m sure on paper it felt wholesome that bullied outcast Les became the “understanding” Mr. Moore to the underdogs of the school student boy. He “gets it”, he can be emphasized with, the underdog helping the underdogs.
The narration is weird, sorta meant to be Chien’s own monologue but slightly omniscient (“you fail to pay attention, yet this’ll change EVERYTHING!”), which fills the vibe that this is the author writing instead of herself. All to fit the bill of promoting the more “relatable” character.
The narration is weird, sorta meant to be Chien’s own monologue but slightly omniscient (“you fail to pay attention, yet this’ll change EVERYTHING!”), which fills the vibe that this is the author writing instead of herself. All to fit the bill of promoting the more “relatable” character.
I think it’s Masky McDeath talking to Chien
I said it before and I’ll say it again. However these “burnings” start and end, it will not in any way explain why bookstores are all gone in the future (except for Lillian’s hallowed grounds of course). We may see some books being burned, but not buildings being destroyed. The disconnect between this and the end of FW will be huge.
I bet Les ends up saving the day, even though this would make no sense in light of how Funky Winkerbean ended.
Anonymous Sparrow,
I have a question right up your bailiwick. The Burnings take in a wide range of topics. Such as government control over media, government spying, censorship, controlling the populace, free speech, draconian laws. Along this line and considering our interests in comics, how would you compare Marvel’s depiction of Nazi fascism versus Soviet Russia’s communism?
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were staunch anti reds in the 1960’s and even beginning into the 1970’s. To me, it seemed the red menace in Marvel was portrayed much more invasive and more damaging to the local population than the Nazis. No comparable Red Skull or Baron Strucker. There were a few communist villains like Crimson Dynamo, but Russian villains tended to be Russian army officers, while Chinese villains tended to be warlords. Thor was stuck with a couple of poor Asian villains: Radioactive Man, and some kind of a voodoo Viet Cong witch doctor. Other than the Black Widow, I don’t remember the Russians battling SHIELD very often.
Mass media is similar. Compare Indiana Jones Nazis in the first 3 films to the Commies in film #4. The Russians seem much more complex and dangerous. Another example: *the Good Shepherd* with Matt Damon. The Russians were much more formidable than the Nazis. James Bond Russian villains were so powerful in his movies.
Final thought of mine that you can correct if necessary. Did DC have any Russian villains?
Even in their spy series Checkmate with Alan Scott and Amanda Waller, I do not remember any Russian threats.
Thank you for your thoughts.
SP:
Dealing with Nazism led to a hot war, and it was one in which the U.S. welcomed the support of the U.S.S.R.
(Think of the infamous Punisher reply to Captain America when he said that his ways were good enough to stop Hitler, and the Punisher answered: “No, sir, the Russians stopped Hitler.”)
(Or of Col. John D. Armbruster’s meeting with Nick Fury in *Hulk* #164. For Armbruster and the men under his command, Fury is practically a god for his war service…while Armbruster is apologetic over “his” war, which was Vietnam.)
The battle against Communism was confined to a Cold War (“it’s just an old war, not even a Cold War,” as Marianne Faithfull sings in “Broken English”) and when it grew hot, as it did in Korea, it turned into a battle against the forces of the People’s Republic of China and led to an armistice (the war’s not over, the shooting’s just stopped)…Harry Truman said that he would have been lynched if he’d accepted the armistice terms Dwight Eisenhower did.
Likewise, when the fighting grew hot again in Vietnam, it led to “a wanton and bloody stalemate” (Ernest Gruening, Senator from Alaska, one of the only two votes against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964, along with Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon; the vote in the House of Representatives was 416-0), which culminated in the U.S. withdrawal in 1973 and the triumph of the Vietcong two years later.
DC does have some Soviet/Russian villains: Mike Barr gave us the Bad Samaritan and the People’s Heroes in The Outsiders and John Ostrander introduced Comrade Zastrow and Stalnoivolk (Steelwolf) in Firestorm. There are also some Soviet heroes going back to Starfire (who would become Red Star after Koriand’r made the scene) in 1968, and Ostrander also gave us Mikhail Arkadin, who began as Pozhar (Destructive Fire) and later joined Ron Raymond as part of Firestorm, and the young heroes of Soyuz.
In All in Color for a Dime, the introduction to one of the essays notes that super-hero comics became the norm as World War II began, enjoyed a slight revival with Korea (Atlas’s resurrection of Cap, the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch) and then got a major jump with the New Frontier in the 1960s.
For Marvel, it seemed to be a matter of having an enemy with an ideology (just like for its heroes it was a matter of being exposed to radiation: see the F.F., the Hulk, Spider-Man and Daredevil); however, even there someone recognized that the stakes were different and that Cap couldn’t punch Khrushchev in the nose as he had once belted Hitler. Thus, in time, the Communist threat became less important (the Black Widow’s efforts for SHIELD behind the Bamboo Curtain were in 1967 and Captain America recognizes the nobility of the Red Guardian) and we could have a KGB agent worthy of respect in Yuri Brevlev in *The Hulk.* For Stan Lee, it may have been a little harder to give up the Communist connections. The Chinese create a duplicate Captain America in 1968 and a year later, they’re behind the Thermal Man in *Thor.*
Yet a year before that, Lee had Iron Man return to Vietnam (*Tales of Suspense* #92-94) to deal with Half-Face and the Titanium Man. Half-Face deserts the Communists when he reconnects with his wife and son, reminding me a little of the Gargoyle in *Hulk* #1, who turns on the Soviets when Bruce Banner restores him to normal…Iron Man doesn’t turn Half-Face over to General Westmoreland or see that Titanium Man goes back to Moscow, where his superiors would have treated him no better than they did at the end of *Tales of Suspense* #83. He says he’ll report that the threats of Half-Face and the Titanium Man are over, which they are, if not as you’d expect.
Clearly, the Lee who could create “Lo! The Commissar Commands!” in *Avengers* #18 (in 1965) could see that the ideological differences were not what they had been. A good example appears in *Fantastic Four* #98, in which we have a variety of reactions to the U.S. Moon landing, with a Soviet husband telling his wife that their country could claim that it invented the Moon.
(Jump ahead to *F.F.* #117 where we have a sense that Chinese soldiers can be as fed up with their leaders as anybody else in the world. This is Archie Goodwin and not Lee, to be sure, but when Marvel reprinted the first Red Ghost story in *Giant-Size Fantastic Four* #2, it came with disclaimers from Roy Thomas about it being written before the then-current detente and even with a sense that things were sure simpler in those days.)
(When Len Wein brought in a Soviet villain called the Devastator in *Hulk,* his activities had to be linked to the Gremlin, the son of the Gargoyle, whose politics were his and not those of the Kremlin.)
Marvel, for good or for ill, tried to be contemporary (Tony Stark went to Vietnam in 1963 before “The Twilight Zone” did in the “In Praise of Pip” episode) while DC was content to create an apolitical world, save in rare tales, usually in *JLA* (#40 and #57, most notably)
I hope this provides some answers…or, failing that, some food for thought.
Thank you for reminding me of the Witch Doctor villain in *Thor.* He was known as the Demon, and Jack Kirby would create a more durable Demon for DC in the 1970s.
“Gone — gone — the form of man! Rise the Demon Etrigan…”
Anonymous Sparrow,
Much appreciation for the food for thought.
I had no experience with Marianne Faithfull until today. I was a total Beatles fan and avoided The Rolling Stones at all costs with the exception of certain songs like *Angie* and *Paint it Black*. So Ms. Faithfull is quite the pleasure. I would like her song *Why’d Ya Do It* played in Les’s class if he really wanted to stick it to the man.
Thank you for reminding me of DC’s involvement with Soviet Russia. (My daughter enjoys Soviet art. Yesterday, Mr. Musk published a picture of Ms. Harris as a Soviet commissar. I wasn’t interested in the reasons. Yet it is so lovely, I sent it to my daughter. I asked her to have it made into a puzzle poster to hang on her wall.) Then as I am writing, my memory is jogged, and I remember the best example: Superman: Red Son. (It might have helped that I am listening to Murray Gold and several of his songs regarding Doctor Who. Peter Capaldi helps me think. I may have to watch *Local Hero tonight. Hey! The village is visited by a Russian fisherman that sings country music! It’s all connected.)
You mention one of my favorite Fantastic Four stories, #13. The Red Ghost. A wonderful competition between the USA and the Soviets for ownership of the moon. (I think we are being watched!) Who doesn’t love super powered apes?
I appreciate you mentioning Harry S Truman: “Harry Truman said that he would have been lynched if he’d accepted the armistice terms Dwight Eisenhower did.” I was born in 1953, and I had fears of seeing Soviet troops marching down our streets and through our back yards in Gladstone Missouri. Although “Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.” (A nice mix of hot and Cold War!)
Til next time my friend!
❤️💖🩷🫂🌺💐🌹
SP:
“Are my eyes really brown?”
So many great lines in “Casablanca” that you just can’t list them all. (Even if Americans didn’t bunder into Berlin in 1918, Captain Renault.)
Marianne Faithfull started out with a sweet, lovely voice, her repertoire ranging from Jagger/Richards (the original “As Tears Go By” to Bernstein/Sondheim (“I Have a Love”). While she was Jagger’s ladyfriend, as Anita Pallenberg was Richards’s, she could write songs and has finally won a writers’s credit for “Sister Morphine.”
She basically reinvented herself at the end of the 1970s with Broken English, and her subsequent releases show her as a cabaret singer of the damned to wonderful effect.
Recommended in this vein: Strange Weather and 20th Century Blues.
Incidentally, both Faithfull and Pallenberg appear on the “Donkey” episode of “Absolutely Fabulous,” the former as God and the latter as the Devil. (Faithfull sings “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” which I would use if I were making a “Miracleman” movie as the Spookshow agents take away Big Ben, the Man with No Time for Crime. The contrast between what he envisions and what the reader sees fairly begs for it.)
In the “Beatles or Stones?” challenge, I’m with you: I have the bulk of the material the Beatles released (save for two volumes of the *Anthology* discs) and very little of the Rolling Stones’s catalogue; indeed, what little I had vanished in a harrowing of my apartment. In recent years, when I had some birthday money to spend, I rectified that with *Sticky Fingers* and a replacement of *Exile on Main St.* (I knew how great *Exile* was, but I wasn’t prepared for how fine the journey on *Sticky* from “Brown Sugar” to “”Moonlight Mile” was.)
The Red Ghost and his Super-Apes and the Watcher debut in the same issue. Top that, Flash and Phil!
(Oooh, look what Crystal the Exquisite Elemental did to your Elementals…how dry is the Oceanaire…)
I share with you Clement Attlee’s view of Harry S Truman:
“One of the best. He didn’t know much when he started, but he learned very quickly. Very courageous fellow.”
Sam Rayburn’s view of him was:
“He was right on all the big things, and wrong on all the little things.”
That may not be true (as David McCullough notes, he got rehabilitating Herbert Hoover right, and the loyalty oath wrong…for Garry Wills, McCarthyism should have been called Trumanism: Wills also thinks Dwight Eisenhower was a political genius, so make of that what you will), but he reflects the hope that you can come into the White House without a college degree and very little preparation from the President you succeeded and that history will treat you kindly, even if your approval rating was once only 23%.
Enjoy your weekend, SP!
The irritating thing isn’t that we’re dealing with Dick Facey, Free Speech Absolutist as such as we’re dealing with a snotty infant eager to stir up trouble to punish Mommy for having an interest that isn’t allowing him to be the moron kid who thinks the Sun will die if his funny book doesn’t arrive before a set date.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Ten Of The Byrnings:
HOLY SHIT IS THAT CLIPART OF OWEN MILLER!?!?
(ahem)
This week feels like the biggest nothingburger
I cannot help but feel the encroaching word zeppelins, crowding out even the smirks, are a sign of creeping mental decline.
It’s fire—and it’s crashing! It’s crashing terrible! Oh, my, get out of the way, please! It’s burning and bursting into flames, and the—and it’s falling on the mooring-mast and all the folks agree that this is terrible, this is one of the worst catastrophes in the world!
Perhaps not even necessarily “mental”, but just of decline, and of the stage lights growing ever more dim.
He knows that he has more years behind him than ahead of him and there is nothing which he is doing or can do that will increase his audience at this point. Earlier today here, Banana was right to wonder why the comic strip page even exists at all today. Banana also recently wrote something which Curmudgeon posts by Josh have similarly stated – the comic strips as we know them today are written by and for people regarding a time and place which no longer exists. Batiuk’s work is far from the only one which uses writing and visual cues that make zero sense in the context of the reality around us, and that is made clear by the words and actions of the characters in relation to how everything is visually depicted. What generation does Leroy Lockhorn belong to? How about Curtis’s dad, who is 40-some years old which means that he was born in 1980 something and yet he reacts to rap music like a boomer? What is the current year in Hi & Lois’s strip – is it 2024 or 1985?
Is Tom going to make like Bolle or Hart and stumble on like this for another actual twenty years, until he’s 90 and deceased while on an easel? Is the syndicated comic strip industry itself going to exist like this throughout that time?